


You'll Never Live It Down (But Do You Want To?)

by xbedhead



Category: Justified
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-13
Updated: 2012-07-13
Packaged: 2017-11-09 21:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xbedhead/pseuds/xbedhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It didn’t matter that he’d barely gotten his arm in the way of a fastball that had been intended for his skull.  They’d all been briefed in the hallway or the bathroom stalls - Raylan Givens was as crazy as his father.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll Never Live It Down (But Do You Want To?)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/profile)[**hc_bingo**](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/) challenge and the _Undeserved Reputation_ prompt. I had to embellish the actual story a bit (Raylan got plugged in the head, not the arm - guess I must’ve read a convincing enough fic where that was so) to make it fit. It’s unbeta’d, please be gentle.

~*~

The halls were quiet that Monday morning. Lockers slammed and tennis shoes screeched along the freshly-waxed tile, but the normal high school chatter - rumors and recounts of the weekend’s parties, who’d made out with who - hushed as he made his way to homeroom.

Mr. McGregor took roll and made announcements, then led them in the pledge of allegiance, starting his crossword puzzle from Sunday’s _Daily Enterprise_ as soon as he’d taken his seat. The juniors had six more minutes to get in the gossip and they started in earnest, turning in their desks, laughter filling the room within moments. Raylan sat in the back and no one approached him, not even his teammates huddled two rows over. He supposed it was better that way - he didn’t feel like putting on a fake smile and cracking a joke about what he’d done. Truth be told, it twisted his stomach a little, if he thought about it too much. Blessedly, the bell rang and he didn’t have to.

Two-thirds of the class shuffled into the hall to start their school week, while the rest remained in the room, sharpening pencils and opening their three-ring binders. First period biology was in the same room, so he stayed glued to his plastic seat, rifling awkwardly through his backpack while trying to ignore the heat of the stares that seemed to surround him.

His arm throbbed - a dull ache radiating from his elbow, right where Dickie Bennett’s eighty-four miles of family feuding fury an hour had nailed him - and he glanced at the clock, noting it was an hour early, but he took the small bottle of Tylenol from his bag and shook four out onto the scratched surface of his desk. He left them sitting in the top corner, wanting to hold out as long as he could. Ava’d told him a story when she came over after church yesterday about her uncle, the one whose truck had rolled off a mountain road and down deep into the holler one night, and how those same kind of pills’d eaten up his insides. Though Raylan supposed the quart-of-white-lightning-a-week habit the man had the last twenty years had something to do with it, too, he eyed the tablets warily.

The chair next to him remained empty and the girl who took the desk in front gave him a nervous smile and slipped into her seat. McGregor started the class without so much as a ‘good morning’ and began outlining the way soap worked on a molecular level on the blackboard, hinting that it might be on the next week’s test. Raylan took careful notes, pinning his loose leaf paper to his desk with his near-dead arm as he squinted at the board. He bit back a his as the tight skin on his cheek pulled - Dickie’s cleat had cut him just below his eye and it was now hot and swollen, an angry red and most likely infected. He caught the over-the-shoulder glances some of his classmates were giving him, and looked down, brows furrowed as he tried to concentrate on his schoolwork instead of who was whispering what about him.

He swiped the pills from his desk quickly and swallowed them dry, tried to focus on the lecture. But with every bullet point, his mind wandered.

He shouldn’ta done it, no matter how angry he was. He and Dickie’d exchanged words before the game, but it wasn’t nothin’ more than opposing teams jawin’ at one another. The lingering smoke from their family fued hadn’t even played into the picture, so far as Raylan was concerned. That kind of stuff was silly and he was tired of it, life being dictated by his last name.

But when that ball connected with his bone, when he’d seen the sole of Dickie’s shoe coming down on his face, he’d seed red and just... _reacted._ He’d felt the snap in Bennett’s leg when his bat connected, but he’d still swung a second time, chest heaving like he was trying to exorcise some demon breathing fire into his lungs. It was only when he’d been pulled off, dragged to the ground and sat on by his batting coach that the pain in his arm began to blossom, radiating through his arm and into his chest.

It wasn’t until he’d gotten home that night, showered and shaved, that he’d realized what he’d done.

The bell rang as McGregor finished up how soap and oils interacted and the classroom quickly emptied. Against his better judgement, Raylan stuffed his notes haphazardly into his bag and slid out of the room, into the throng of jostling teenagers, hellbent to make it to class on time or into the bathroom for their next cigarette.

The hallway was crammed tight with students - a product of a new graduation incentive program the town leadership had set up. Kids didn’t drop out like they used to anymore, but the county didn’t exactly have the funds to hold them all. Some people said it made teachers pass kids that didn’t need to move on to the next grade just to open up a desk. Some said it was a good way to deal with unemployment in the county - kept boys out of the mine longer and girls, hopefully, from getting pregnant and hitched so soon. Either way, there was always a line out the door for the toilet and freshmen and sophomores had to share lockers.

Raylan forced his way through the herd to his own locker, sucking air through his teeth every time someone jostled his arm. He fumbled with the combination, bending slightly to hold everything close, but it wasn’t enough to keep his notebook and papers from sliding through his open backpack and fluttering to the floor. He sighed loudly and dropped his bag, then took a knee and began to retrieve all that had fallen. Piecing his belongings together with one hand was taking longer than normal and he became acutely aware of just exactly what was being whispered around him.

_“...beat the shit out of him.”_

_“Well, his daddy’s a leg-breaker...”_

_“ - a_ base _ball bat.”_

 _“Doyle’s_ pissed _.”_

_“...and the fued’ll start back up.”_

He shouldn’t have been surprised. Normal people...well, they just didn’t _do_ things like that. No matter how big the rivalry was between Everett and Bennett, it had never warranted anything like what was displayed on Bennett field Saturday afternoon. He should’ve known there would be fallout when he took someone to task in a manner that gained his father’s approval. The past Saturday night, stretched out on the couch with a bag of ice on his numb arm, it was the first time he could ever remember Arlo acting remotely pleased with something he’d done.

“How’d it feel, givin’ that little sack o’ shit what he deserved?”

When Raylan had only shrugged by way of an answer, Arlo had snorted a little and took another pull from his bottle of beer. “High time you learned - keep that ice on it. You’ll be fine by mornin’.”

Except he hadn’t been fine. His fingers had been tingling the last thirty-six hours and he’d almost finished the bottle of painkillers he’d fished out of the medicine cabinet. There wasn’t anything to be done, though - the Harlan County Clinic staff could barely do stitches and he was almost sure there weren’t any bones broken. Aunt Helen had taken her Fairlane up to Lexington for the weekend and he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit to Arlo that he was hurting.

He looked up and saw half a dozen faces staring down at him, looking like they might’ve helped him on Friday, but were thinking twice about it today.

That’s when he realized that they were afraid of him. It had nothing to do with the gossip, with the story of what had happened and who heard what and who saw what. It didn’t matter that he’d barely gotten his arm in the way of a fastball that had been intended for his skull. They’d all been briefed in the hallway or the bathroom stalls - Raylan Givens was as crazy as his father.

He wanted to stand up and ask “Do you think I’m just gonna...what? Take you all down for lookin’ at me? For standin’ there, breathin’?” He wasn’t crazy, he wanted to say. He wouldn’t have done anything unless he’d been provoked.

He smiled ruefully as he stood up pinned his backpack to the wall with his knee and pulled the zipper closed. It didn’t matter what he said, people had made up their minds about him. Maybe it would all blow over in a week, maybe it wouldn’t.

It was high school. He’d get over it.


End file.
